Glowing
by TheFirstDayOfSpring
Summary: AU: After Rachel Berry breaks up with her boyfriend in New York, she decides to leave Broadway and move to Washington to work for the FBI. She gets paired up with Quinn Fabray. As their relationship develops, Quinn seems to have more and more secrets and when she leaves Washington, Rachel goes after her. It turns into an emotional road trip and their relationship grows stronger.
1. Chapter 1

When I felt her soft lips pushing gently against my forehead this morning, I woke up, but I didn't open my eyes, or get up. I thought she was still lying on the other side of the bed, and I was too sleepy to consider otherwise. I inhaled extra deep when I smelt the scent of her shampoo. I smiled, and I guess I fell back asleep right after, because I can't recall the door closing behind her.

I woke up later, but I don't know how much. I looked at the other side of the bed, but she wasn't there. And she wasn't anywhere else in the room and I didn't hear the shower running. I couldn't think of other places she could be, because all this motel room had were a dirty looking grey bedroom and a green tiled bathroom, so small that when you had to pee, your legs were almost under the shower.

I sat up and looked around, not really worried yet. I figured she was just checking out or something, since she said she didn't want to stay that long. So I got up.

I opened the suitcase and immediately saw some of her clothes were missing. That's when I started to panic. I put on some clothes before I stormed to the door. I looked outside. She wasn't checking out. She wasn't just taking a walk. She's gone.

_Eight months earlier _

I felt the steering wheel slip through my sweaty hands a little as I drove onto the parking lot. I inhaled deeply and heard myself squeaking as I sighed out. I had never been that nervous in my life. I used to have auditions all the time, and if I did well I had five plays a week. Most of them were big productions on Broadway, others were small, but I loved it just the same. But the nerves I felt that day couldn't compare.

Maybe because this is not a play. This is a job. And what kind of job.

I woke up that morning, again wondering why I had chosen for this and if I'd made the right choice. I was kind of shocked when my alarm clock went off, since I was used to 10 o'clock rehearsals and some extra dance classes in the afternoon and I was worried I'd be late. But I was done twenty minutes before I had to go, which made me stress even more.

I hoped that day would put an end to my endless doubt as I stopped the car. I looked up at the huge building. There were a lot of buildings like these in Washington and they were so different from the ones in New York, I would never have found it without the navigator. I looked for an excuse to stay in the car a little longer, like a nice song on the radio, but in my stress I forgot to turn the radio on when I left. I rubbed my hands in an attempt to get the sweat off, but it only made it worse.

_What am I doing?_ I asked myself for about the millionth time that month. _There's no way back now._ I looked at the building again. _The buildings in New York are so much prettier. _

"You?" my dad said, when I first told him about my plans. "Rachel, you used to cry for hours when you had a paper cut. You would never hurt a fly. A little change every now and then is okay, but don't you think this is a little drastic?" I said I had made up my mind. I said there was nothing they could say that would hold me back.  
"But sweetie," my other dad tried. "You love New York. Washington is nothing like it." Everything they said was true and I knew as well as they did that they were right. But I wanted to do this. I think I really did.

"Stop," I said out loud, to my inner voices and memories. I put on a big fake smile, hoping it would make me believe that was how I felt, like I would to prepare for a new role. I grabbed the little suitcase from the passenger's chair. I wasn't sure why I brought it. I had seen people walking around with them in movies, so I figured I'd bring one, even if it was just to look more serious.

I got out of the car and pulled the ends of my jacket. I kept smiling and nodded to people I met as I walked into the building. My nerves got pushed aside for a minute when I saw the entrance hall again. It was so big and impressive. The marble walls made me feel safe, and their heights made me feel small, which calmed me down a bit. It reminded me of the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York and I felt a little bit home for the first time since I arrived in Washington.

"You must be Berry," a soft voice said when I was walking to the elevators. I turned around and my eyes met the dreamy ones from a blond woman about my age. For a moment, I kept quiet. Her eyes were really beautiful. I could tell they were usually hazel, but from this view, with the marble reflecting the fresh morning sun around the hall, her eyes were gold.

"Yes," I said, when I found my speech back. I stuck my hand out to shake hers. "Rachel Berry."

"Quinn Fabray," she said. _Quinn_. The sound of her name roamed around in my head for a while. The way she'd said it sounded so nice. "Nice to meet you. You can come with me." _I will come with you._ But she stayed where she was, because we had to wait for the elevator to come down. It arrived with a soft 'pling'. I'd always hated that sound, as much as I hated elevators in general. They took my balance away for a while, sometimes it would take me hours to walk straight again. I would have taken the stairs, but I had to be pretty high up and now I had to stay with Quinn.

We stepped into the elevator and before even picking a floor, she closed the doors. I guess she didn't really like company in an elevator either.

"It seems you'll be my old partner," she said. "Oh," I replied, swallowing hard as I realized I probably had to spend a lot of time with her. And I wasn't sure why, but that excited me. "That's nice."

"Sure." I couldn't really tell how she felt about it. An awkward silence hung around us until the elevator stood still.

The rest of my first day included meeting up with the boss of the department, Lance Clayton, a serious looking man, but quite cynical at some moments, which made it hard for me to understand how he meant what he said, again, which he referred to as the 'hunters club', and I guess that made sense. He explained that me and Quinn would 'go out on the field' next week, to show me what it was like and after that I had to decide if I still wanted to go for this. I thought he was joking.

I met the other agents, but Quinn called them hunters, so I guess the hunters club was a pretty serious code name. There was one dark skinned guy, with a playful smirk constantly covering his face. He introduced himself as Benji, no last name, just Benji. And his eyes were really nice looking. He was really handsome and I couldn't help but smile when he looked at me.

We drank coffee with the other members and then she took me to the office. The other members all stayed in the coffee room, I guess that was how a usual day started for an FBI agent. Drinking coffee with your coworkers. Kind of like actors, I thought.

The office was a huge hall, with short walls to separate the little area's with desks in them. I think there were about forty of them. On the left side there were actual walls, consistent of only big windows with blinds behind them. It looked ridiculously boring. I prayed I wouldn't have to spend a lot of time there.

She directed me to my desk, which was next to hers and the window. I looked outside and felt my stomach clench when I saw how high we were up.

"The view is pretty amazing, isn't it?" Quinn said. I hadn't looked much farther than the parking lot, but when I did, I saw buildings on my left, and straight ahead, but when I looked between the two buildings across from the one I was in, I saw a big green park, and right behind that, I saw the shore. A boat full of tourists slid through the water so slowly you could barely see it moving. And it was indeed pretty amazing, as far as you could see from there.

I turned away from the window to look at my desk. There was a box on it, with someone's stuff in it, but for the rest it was completely empty.

"He never even came to pick up his stuff," Quinn said, slightly annoyed.

"What happened?" I asked, slightly worried. "He seemed so strong in the gym. Pissed his pants and froze when I needed him." I got a little more worried. I wouldn't even seem strong in the gym. I was hired on my sweet looks that would come in handy to mislead the wolf. Those were the literal words mr Clayton used. I wondered what I would do if Quinn needed me and tried to imagine what kind of situation that would be anyway.

"It's okay," Quinn said. I think she saw my eyes widening at my thoughts. "I asked for a female partner. You'll do fine." I smiled nervously and looked in her direction. She walked towards my desk and took the box while she mumbled, "I'll take care of this." She took it to another desk and I waited for her as I set my suitcase on the desk.

"Why did you want a female partner?" I asked when she came back. She didn't say anything for a while, like she didn't realize I was asking her and then suddenly remembered. "I just figured we would make a better team." And then she turned around and walked towards her own desk.

I spend the day meeting some club members and starting things up. I didn't see Benji, though, Quinn said he was preparing for a 'hunt'. She said she thought we would get one soon and that we would start my personal training the day after, because she wanted to see what I was capable of. She basically wanted to see whether I was strong enough to be thrown in front of the big bad wolf, or to be the one saving her from it.


	2. Chapter 2

I tried to call, but she left her phone in the motel room. I found it beneath her pillow, where she always left it, strangely enough. I put it in my left pocket, my own phone in the right. I grabbed some clothes that were lying around on the floor and threw everything that was ours in our suitcase.

I dragged the suitcase across the parking lot and let it go when I reached her car.

_How could I be this stupid? _I felt like yelling at myself and I wanted to scream, but right now I just had to stay strong and think really hard.

I went to the reception to check out, if Quinn hadn't already. The old lady wiggled through the door behind the counter when she heard the bell ringing when I opened the door.

"Oh, hello," she said.

"Hi," I started, and I realized I was trying pretty hard not to cry. "Did my- uhm, friend check out when she left this morning?"

"The blonde?" She shoved her glasses a little farther up her nose, as if she had to think about whom I was talking about, while I was pretty sure there were no other guests in the motel - and there hadn't been in a while.

"Yes," I almost whispered. I hated talking in this state.

"She did," she smiled. "I thought you left with her."

"At what time did she leave?" I started to get frustrated. I wanted her to understand what was going on and what she had to say. But she didn't. And I couldn't blame her.

"About half an hour ago." I felt my eyes widening as they lit up.

"Did you see which way she went?"

_Seven months earlier_

"We don't need to go over the plan _again_, right?" Quinn asked, when she stopped the car in front of the bar where I would meet my first wolf.

"No, I get it now," I said, nervously. Quinn had assured me that if I did everything by the plan, nothing could go wrong. It was her who was going to steal the show this time. All I had to do was open and close the curtains at the right time and take care of some of the lighting.

In the past month, I was learned some tips and tricks on how to get someone unconscious safely and I got explained very clearly what I had to do with the special button on the new phone they got me. I had to push it when we were ready and the zoo keepers would come to pick our wolf up. I learned all these codenames and I actually started to use them, though it felt a little ridiculous in the beginning, but I guess it made sense.

My first hunt was going to be an easy one, and I noticed Quinn was a little upset that she had to 'catch a rabbit'. A rabbit is a criminal who wasn't very dangerous or hard to tackle, but I felt like it was quite a dangerous job no matter what, so I called everyone a wolf.

Everyone advised me to just watch Quinn closely and I would pick it up soon enough. I was an actress after all. So my part wasn't very big tonight, I would be lucky if I even got mentioned in the credits, and yet I was more nervous than ever.

"Nothing's gonna happen, Rachel," Quinn said when I sighed loudly. "Look at me." I looked sideways into her golden eyes. "You're gonna do fine. I'm gonna be okay. Tomorrow we'll celebrate your first successful hunt. Because you're gonna do fine." I didn't understand how she could trust me so much. If I failed, I would ruin her life. But she seemed to either really believe in me or she just didn't care so much.

"Let's go," she said. Of course she wasn't nervous. She'd taken wolfs much bigger than this one. And she actually had to hunt them, not just catch them. Actually shoot them. And I was worried about turning in a rabbit.

I sighed once more, but now leaving only confidence. _I can do this. _So I made sure I still had my phone and practiced the tricks I'd learned as we made our way to the entrance. Quinn took my hand to stop me from it and I started to get nervous again.

There were no security guards outside the door or anything, it wasn't a very fancy bar, like the ones I went to in New York. Bad music was playing inside and everything looked gross. Few people were dancing, and if they were it looked strange. It wasn't very charming, or even rhythmic.

We made our way to the bar. "Don't even take a sip," I made out of the whisper she husked into my ear.

"I know," I replied, while I followed her through the crowd. There were old people, mostly men, and they were all looking at me as if I were a flirty teenager with a lot of cleavage and a lack of skirt. Which I wasn't, really. And neither was Quinn, tonight. I guess she figured it wouldn't be necessary in this company. We got to the bar, where Quinn ordered two glasses of pure vodka, which wouldn't have been my choice, but I wasn't allowed to drink from it anyway.

She handed me one of the glasses and looked around. After a short while of stretching her neck out in several directions, looking for the man who's picture we'd been looking at for the past weeks, she tapped me on the shoulder as if she didn't have my attention already and pointed her finger through the crowd behind me. I looked, but there were too many people for me to see who she was pointing at.

She stepped behind me as I turned around, lay her hand on my waist and her chin on my shoulder. It took me a moment to realize she was only trying to make me see Fawkes, by turning my vision into hers and I almost forgot what we came there for. The feeling of her gentle, soft hands to the sensitive skin of my hip made my breath stock for a moment and my heart started beating fast.

It didn't help when I finally spotted Fawkes, our wolf. His head was bold, but he left his goatee on his chin, which made him look kind of gross. He was very tall and wide and he was showing off his muscles by wearing a short sleeved black t-shirt. I turned my head sideways, trying not to stop looking at Fawkes, because I wasn't sure if I would find him back if I lost him now, but as soon as the tip of Quinn's nose entered my sight, I failed. The only thing that kept me in character, to use my own terms for once, was the way she stayed focused.

She let go of me and only then I realized my distraction had been a very unlikely thing to happen to me. I was trained to cope with a little distraction.

One time I was in the debut play of a well known director, who had rewarded himself with a nine year long hiatus after a few very successful musicals on Broadway in five years. In one of the love scenes, my co-player had a stroke. Right on the stage, he just dropped. And the director kept motioning me to go on. It felt a little barbaric to keep acting while my partner got dragged off the stage by two extras, but the audience and the pressure of the press and critics was too big to blow the entire play off, so I never broke character and improvised a completely new scene until his substitute was ready to come up.

I guess you could say I saved the act with my outstanding professionalism. That's what the director told me afterwards. My co-player was fine, too. But he never got back on the stage. Too risky. But from that moment on I had been very proud of my outstanding professionalism.

And somehow, Quinn took that all away.

She nodded her head to let me know she was ready. I wasn't, but if we had to wait for that, Fawkes would have had already left by the time we could do something, so I followed her through the crowd. She stood still about five yards away from him, gestured me to stay in that exact place and continued walking towards the wolf.

It took me only half a minute to conclude this was going to be the hardest part of the hunt. Or maybe even the entire job. Watching her walk right into the trap. And though this wasn't a very dangerous trap, the long period consequences left out, it was still hard to see her touching that dirty bastard with those soft, gentle hands, that had only just been touching me and her golden eyes looking up at him as if she was actually into him. And that wasn't supposed to be hard for me anyway.

After a while of obnoxious fake giggling and flirting, Quinn brought her hand to her mouth and lifted her heels even higher than her shoes were already forcing her to, to whisper something in Fawkes ear.

"I would like a big piece of your home baked apple pie," she would say. That was the code. It took us weeks to figure that out, while all we had to do was adjust some bugging equipment to a suspected costumer's shirt.

It took some more flirting before the guy finally gestured her to follow him. He walked all the way to the other side of the bar again. I kept the five yards between us as I followed them, never taking my eyes off my wolf this time.


	3. Chapter 3

I changed the radio channel about fifteen times before I realized not a single song would fit my current mood. I turned the radio off and put my sunglasses on as the sun shone a little brighter by the minute.

I couldn't take the silence either, but that wasn't the worst thing on my mind. The lady from the motel said she took off to the north. I could recall pretty clearly she told me we were headed to the west when we left yesterday morning. But she wouldn't have left on her own if she was gonna be completely honest with me.

So I kept going north.

_Seven months earlier _

I walked into the office the next day and as soon as the people on the first desks noticed me, the entire room started applauding for me. Although I was used to some applause, I had no idea how to respond to this surprise.

"I told you we would celebrate your first successful hunt, right?" Quinn walked up to me and hugged me tight. It was like she pushed all the air out of my lungs and stopped my heart for a second, but she wasn't squeezing that hard.

"You caught the biggest drug dealer in Washington," Benji said, who was now standing behind me. Quinn let go of me and Benji put his arm around my waist. "The newbie caught Lars Fawkes!" he yelled, pointing his left index finger at me. The room started cheering and clapping again and Benji instructed a secretarian to get me some coffee.

"It was actually all her," I said, pointing at Quinn, trying not to smile too big.

"No no, I couldn't have done it without you," she said and this time I had to turn my head to hide the enormous smile that sentence somehow gave me.

"Don't you guys have anything better to do?" I laughed. Benji announced we would finish the party tonight in a bar down the street.

Me and Quinn had nothing to do for the rest of that day. Nothing in particular. The club left her hunters alone after a hunt, so they'd have time to rest a little and prepare well for whatever next hunt they would get.

So before lunch, we helped out Benji and his partner Norah, who were about to catch a forger. Not the hardest job, Benji'd said, but it took some thinking to get right. We went to a small office on the side of the big one, where we sat on the end of a big table and listened as Norah laid out the case.

This woman they were about to track down seemed to be quite brilliant. She was pretty successful until this hotel she'd worked for a while declared her to the police, but she never gave away her real name. The police had tried to find out about her past, but there didn't seem to exist any Lauren Vandale from Boston. That's where they handed the case to the FBI.

"I used her picture to find out more," Norah said. "She currently lives in New York, so of course people have seen her. Turns out she works at the Guggenheim museum now, under the name Leila Vos."

"She kept the same initials," I said, just to have something to say and be helpful. I'd written both names down in a notebook and it just struck to me as suspicious, maybe.

"Exactly," Norah said. I smiled, because my comment hadn't been as stupid as I thought. Some of her past names were Linda Varenheim and Lucy Vincents."

"Do the letters LV mean something else?" I asked, trying to maybe get to something.

"Probably her own initials," Benji replied. "And they can't all be anagrams," he added as I started hustling the letters of all the names Norah had just mentioned. He was probably right. Quinn sniggered softly next to me.

"Good thinking," she said, and her tone made me realize I had misinterpreted her snigger, because she meant it. Or at least, she wanted me to believe she meant it.

"So you guys are going to New York soon?" I asked when Benji stood up for lunch.

"We're leaving tomorrow," Norah said. I wished them luck and we all left to the cafeteria.

Quinn and I spend the afternoon practicing or hunting skills in the gym. We jogged around the gym like we had every day before our first hunt. My perseverance had become a whole lot better since I started training. I could go five rounds without stopping. In New York I wouldn't have made it two.

"You can't stop running when there's a guy with a chainsaw running after you!" Quinn would yell at me in the beginning when I gave up. And then she laughed because the possibility of that happening was rather small, but she kept running for ten rounds after I'd stopped eight laps before.

I wanted to walk towards the strength training room after breaking my personal record to six rounds and having rested for a while, but Quinn grabbed my wrist. She'd trained her muscles enough and probably forgot about that sometimes, because she pulled my arm a little too hard and I almost fell. She caught me in her arms.

"Woops," she said, giggling softly. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I said. We stood there for just a little too long. I looked her and she cleared her throat awkwardly and let me go. "We're not gonna lift today." Her face turned to normal again and she firmly walked out in front of me, back to where we entered the gym.

In those past weeks, I had tried to get to know Quinn. I tried really hard, because I spent so much time with her, but it just didn't work. I had no idea if she even liked me or not. She seemed quite annoyed with me half of the time, because I was inexperienced and somewhat of a coward when it came to doing things. I was quiet and insecure most of the time because I was still getting the hang of things and I had the idea Quinn got a little frustrated by that. She was good at everything she did and then there was me, taking her back to the first level when she had almost reached the end of the game.

But then there were moments like these, when she pulled me by my wrist and giggled at my weak reaction, not because it was stupid, but because she thought it was cute or something. Like when she'd sniggered at my attempt to impress in the small office. Those weren't mean gestures, but I had no idea what else they were.

She didn't stop to change in the dressing room. She just walked out into the hallway in her blue shorts and black tank top and I went after her.

"Where are we going?" I asked when I caught myself staring at her back and a little bit down and getting lost in the way she elegantly moved her hips as she walked. I felt a little weird.

"It's about time you learn how to use a gun," she said, and suddenly I was back to the FBI head quarters, Washington, Maryland.

"Really?" I asked, trying to keep my eyes in their sockets. The whole badass FBI dream had started when I had watched movie with Angelina Jolie shooting all these bastards' asses and I thought, 'I can try…', so I went here. To hold a gun and look as badass as Angelina Jolie.

"Yes, you silly, that's what it's all about, right?" _Did she just call me_ _silly_?

She opened a door to our left. "Do you have your pass with you?" she asked, as we entered a small room that was poorly lit. The walls were black and I had to squint to try to see anything, but then I realized there wasn't much to see, apart from another door.

"Yes," I said. She'd told me on my very first day, right when she gave it to me, to always bring my pass everywhere I went. I didn't really understand what it was good for until then. She held her own pass in front of a device that was hanging next to the door. The door slid to the side and, again, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me through.

I didn't really need my pass now, but I realized I wouldn't want it to end up in the wrong hands as I found out what was in the next room.

I had never really learned anything about guns at all, and this room made me feel a little hopeless about having to. There were so many different shapes and sizes, I had no idea where to even start. Big ones were hanging from the left wall, small ones on the right. There were really old ones, just for show, I guess, and really modern ones. Some didn't even look like guns.

Quinn took two quite new ones from the right wall and tossed one towards me. It startled me a little, but then I realized they probably weren't loaded yet, so I caught it just before it would be too late. It was pretty 'silly' and she giggled again. I threw her a serious look and said, "Watch out. I'm holding a gun now." And she said, "Yeah. Me too."

We spend the following two hours on the indoor shooting range, which was dark, except for the lit up target dolls. They were actually just wooden cut outs of a male upper body, but it was quite fun to practice on.

Quinn had showed me how to load a gun first in the separate bullet room and she'd taken a lot of ammunition into the range, because she was going to teach me well at once.

I figured she must have had a reason for the shooting lesson, but she didn't say anything about it.

She demonstrated the first shot on a cut out target. "Look at me, not the target," she said. It was hard to hear through the earplugs, but whether I would have heard it or not, that wasn't going to be a problem.

I watched her as she stood straight up, her right arm stretched out with the gun, her elbow resting on her left hand. Her left eye was closed as she looked over the small but firm barrel of the gun. Her lips parted slightly in concentration and her mandible stuck out just a little more than usual. And for the first time I found a word that suited her. _Hot_.

I jumped back when she fired the first bullet. The sound had been way louder than I'd imagined with the earplugs in, which made me fall back down to earth and almost to the ground. I kept my feet on the ground, though, and followed Quinn's eyes as she blew a wisp of blond hair from her face.

The bullet went straight through where the heart would have been, if wooden cut outs of half men had hearts. This one would have been dead.

"Your turn," she said, smiling as she loosened her tense position and lowered her arms. I took the gun from the table where I'd left it when I was watching her, because I was a little scared to hold it for some reason.

I walked to where she was standing and she stepped back to take her position behind me. I did exactly what I'd seen her do, but she still had a lot to adjust. She straightened my back and shoulders a bit more, using her hands at first. But then she was going to put my arms in place and she put her arms around me. I felt a little uncomfortable, but on the other hand I was holding a gun and I had never felt that badass in my entire life, so I was okay with it. Her chest pushed against my back softly, but I kind of ignored it by concentrating on her hands, sliding over my arms gently to place them the way she wanted to. She didn't let go of my shoulders or step back and get her chin from my shoulder as she said, "Pull." I almost forgot what she meant as I felt her breath moving my hair a little.

I pulled the trigger, but since I didn't pay much attention to the whole aiming part, I didn't even hit the cut out, but the wall behind it, which was resistant to that. But that didn't take away anything of the feeling of firing your first bullet.

Or maybe that rush in my veins was caused by a different fire. I couldn't really tell.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note: Hey guys, sorry for the late update. Anyway here it is, I hope you like it. Please review if you do or if you don't. **

"What are you doing?" I asked when I walked into Quinn's apartment yesterday morning, holding two paper cups containing steaming hot coffee. She was throwing small piles of clothes into an opened suitcase next to her bed. I put the coffee on the counter and awaited the answer.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. She sounded slightly irritated, though she was usually quite happy when I came by for a surprise visit before work. It was a sunny Friday morning in the early spring and the city was coming alive after a cold, depressing winter. Washington started to feel like New York for the first time since I moved there.

"I have come to bring you coffee and take you to work. Carpooling. It's good for the environment." Quinn didn't care the least bit about the environment, but she knew that wasn't why I was picking her up. She sighed and stopped packing.

"You can go without me," she said. She must have realized I wasn't even going to ask why. "I'm going to visit an aunt in Pennsylvania."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"She called me yesterday evening, I didn't have time to call you. I'm sorry, I promise I'll make it up to you." That's when I knew she was lying. I could sense her voice shiver in that last sentence from thirty feet away. I was confused. We'd had dinner together after work the night before, and looking back, she was already acting a little curious than she did lately. She'd insisted on paying and bringing me home and when we kissed goodbye, she held me a lot longer than necessary, considering it was just a Thursday night and we would see each other the whole day after. I offered her to stay, or to come home with her, but she declined and walked back to her car with her head down. She left without waving or even looking out of the window.

"Can I come?" I asked, because I wasn't entirely sure if she was lying yet.

"No," she said, but it was more like a suppressed yell. She sat down on the bed, her back turned towards me. Her hand was in front of her face, but I couldn't tell why.

"Just go to work, Rach. You're gonna be late."

"Why are you lying to me?" I asked. I didn't care if I was accusing her of something she didn't do, because I couldn't even stand the idea of her lying to me. She must have had a really good reason.

But she kept quiet.

Seven months earlier

I was wearing the dress I'd worn to the premier party of Les Miserable a few months before. It was dark green, pretty tight and ended right above my knees. The back was all the way open, but the front was high up and the sleeves reached to my elbows. I spend two hours wondering if it was the right dress for a simple celebration in a bar I'd never been to, probably pretty casual, until I decided it was time to go.

I agreed with Quinn and Norah to meet at the end of my street, because Quinn and Norah lived right around the corner. They were neighbors, apparently. Benji lived on the other side of the city, so we'd meet him at the bar.

Quinn was wearing a red summer dress that was way too short for this time of the year, especially because her legs were bare. She wore a leather jacket to cover her arms, but she still seemed cold.

"Hey," she said, as soon as she saw me coming. I greeted her back and asked about Norah.

"She told me to go without her. She should be here by now. She's taking her boyfriend, so she'll be fine. Nice dress, by the way." She looked me in the eye as she said that and she smirked slightly.

"Thanks," I said, unable to contain a giggle.

I'd been thinking about her ever since I'd gotten home. I thought about the way I had thought she was hot when she was firing that gun. I'd thought about the way I had looked at her as she walked out in front of me, completely forgetting where I was and what I was doing. I also thought of the way she looked at me all the time and giggled when I did something she called 'silly' and I was starting to feel a little weird about it. I wasn't really sure of what was going on.

After about a minute of unsubtly inspecting each other we saw Norah and her boyfriend walk towards us. Her boyfriend was a handsome guy with blonde hair that was styled backwards, but it stood up a little. Norah had curled her brown hair and she was wearing a blue dress, but it was a lot different than mine.

"I'm Harry," her boyfriend said, sticking his hand out to shake mine.

"Rachel," I said.

"Let's go!" Quinn said and she walked ahead of us, until she pulled me next to her by my elbow, hooking her arm into mine.

We got into the bar, that was fancier than I'd expected it to be, so my dress wasn't that horrible of a decision. Quinn let go of my arm as we took our coats off and handed them to Harry, who took care of it.

"There she is!" Benji shouted while he walked towards us. Again, the entire room started applauding and I got very awkward. Apparently Benji had told the entire bar about last night's success. I wasn't even sure if it was okay for them to know, but I guess he told them some other story. No one bothered to ask about it and I was glad. People I had never seen before patted my shoulder and I got a drink pushed into my hand.

"Hey, I was there, too," Quinn tells the next person who wants to give me a drink. He gives the drink to her and she drinks it all at once. I can't hear what she's yelling over the music and the talking, but the look on her face tells me she wants me to do the same.

The last time I'd gotten drunk had been in high school. In New York I went out quite frequently, but I never had more than one or two drinks.

I hadn't even been to the bar when I finished my fifth drink and I was already starting to feel my head spin.

"Let's dance," said Quinn, who'd drunk as much as me, but seemed to be a bit more resistant to it. She took me to the dance floor, where we found Benji, Norah and Harry and some other hunters, whom I didn't really get the chance to meet yet. I knew their names, but that was it.

I let go of myself completely. I kept shouting things and I was dancing and singing to everything. Benji left and got back with two drinks a minute later and he gave one to me. I was pretty sure he'd already gotten me one, but I didn't mind.

At some point the dj made a shout out to the lovers in the bar. He played Against All Odds by Phil Collins and everyone around us just started slow dancing as if none of the careless dancing before ever happened. I remember Benji took me by my waist and I just went for it until Quinn took him away from me. She was yelling something into his ear, but I couldn't hear her. She seemed pretty mad, so I just assumed they had something going on, or at least Quinn thought they had, because I couldn't think of Benji doing something like that to someone. He yelled something back and I walked toward them, because I felt lonely with all the couples around me. Then I stumbled over someone's foot. Quinn grabbed me slightly under my waist.

"I'm gonna take you home, okay?" she said. I looked at her face from the side while we got our coats. I remember trying to tell her I wasn't that drunk.

The next thing I remember was hanging above a gutter out on the street, staring at my own vomit. I felt an arm around my waist and another holding my hair back.

"Ho shit," I heard myself mumble.

"It's okay," a husky voice said and the hand that was on my hip moved up and down slowly.

"What the hell," I said. I couldn't believe this was happening. It hadn't happened in a while.

"It's okay, just sit down. I think it's all out now." Quinn guided me onto the pavement and I almost fell sideways as I sat down, but she helped me back up.

"Wow, this is so embarrassing," I whispered.

"No, it's okay, it happens to everyone," Quinn said, while she handed me a bottle of water. I had trouble getting it open, but I was very thankful for it. "Your first hunt is a success and they buy you all these drinks. It's rude to decline, so it happens. No reason to be ashamed." It was nice of her, but I thought this was enough reason to be too ashamed to go back to work tomorrow morning. Why do people party on Thursdays anyway?

"You should go back in there, I'll be fine," I said, because I felt like she was wasting her time on me and the last thing I wanted to be was a drag to her, because that's what I had felt like all month and now it was finally starting to fade.

"No way, I'm gonna get you home safe and I'm gonna stay for the night, if that's okay." She stated it. She wasn't asking.

"Don't you have a boyfriend to go to?" I asked her. I didn't want to. It just came out. And then she started laughing. Quite hard actually, considering the fact I hadn't said anything funny.

I had known her for a month and neither of us had ever asked or said anything about a boyfriend, but I just assumed a pretty girl like her had one and I never questioned it.

"What?" I asked, getting really confused. I took it as a no, but she wouldn't stop laughing. I guess she wasn't as sober as I had thought in the first place.

"I didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"I'm gay, Rachel" she said. I felt my heart jump a little bit when she said that. And then it all came together. She way she touched me, the way she repositioned me when she taught me how to shoot, fragments from our dancing were coming back to me and I hadn't been imagining it.

I got a little nervous then. About year ago I had broken up with my ex boyfriend and it had taken me quite long to get over him. I loved him, I was pretty sure of that, but now that Quinn had mentioned it, my stomach started to get ticklish in the same way it had for Finn.

But I couldn't be gay.

I had never felt that way about a woman before and I wasn't feeling it now. I only got nervous because Quinn probably liked me and I was gonna have to reject her. I told myself that while I stared at the other side of the road blankly.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, suddenly waking up from my thoughts. "Yeah. Yeah, my dads are gay, actually."

"Oh, that's so cool," she said and she really meant it. I decided if it was indeed nothing, I could look her in the eye right then and think that again. So I tried.

The light of the orange lantern made her eyes look not golden, but copper. And it didn't matter, because it was the shape that gave her that dreamy look that made you sink into them when you looked right into them. And I forgot what I had just been thinking.

I could feel there was this tension. The kind you feel when you know that your heads are about to come closer toward each other and you already get sucked into the moment your lips touch and your entire body gets warmed up and you feel like you're glistening.

I turned my head back to the front and leaned forward. Quinn cleared her throat and got ready to stand up.

"We should go home," she said.

We got to my apartment and I handed her my key. She opened the door and I stumbled in. It was quite a nice apartment. It was modern and bigger than necessary. The bedroom was too far away for my current state of being, so I just sat down on the couch.

I remembered why I never drunk a lot. I always felt miserable right after. All I wanted to do was lay down and cry, but I didn't want to do that in front of Quinn. I kind of wanted her to leave, but I also didn't.

Quinn walked towards my kitchen as if it were her own place, even though she'd never been there before, and got me a glass of water. I had drunk the entire bottle on the way home.

"Not thirsty," I babbled and I hated that I sounded so ungrateful, but I couldn't help it.

"You have to drink as much water as you can. It helps against the hangover." I drank the water, because I didn't want to fight her over it. Fighting requires eye contact.

I drank the whole glass and put it on the table. I let myself fall into the arm rest.

"Let's get you to bed," Quinn said, while she pulled me back up.

"I know the way," I said. I didn't want her to put me into bed as if I was a sick eight year old kid. I knew exactly what was going on.

"Can I borrow a shirt?" Quinn asked when I had just entered my bedroom. I took two shirts from my wardrobe and handed her one as she was standing in the doorway.

"Thanks." I wondered where she was gonna sleep. I wasn't gonna make her lie on the couch, but it was up to her, really.

I lay down on the bed, on top of the sheets. It was always quite warm in this room and the window was too small to make up for it. And I didn't mind.

After a few minutes, Quinn walked into my room. "I used your toothbrush, if you don't mind." I didn't, but it would have been too late to object anyway. She lay down on the other side of the bed. And I lost it. I started crying and I didn't care that I was looking at her in a way I never even knew I could.

"Hey, what's wrong?" she asked, while she got into a position in which she could put her arms around my shoulders. I shrugged as I felt my breath stock at her touch. "Do you like me?" I asked. I didn't want to ask. I was afraid of the answer, because it would be awkward either way.

"Yes," she said softly. She gently moved her thumbs over my upper arm. I wasn't sure what she was doing, but her chin was on top of my head. By the way she was breathing I could tell she was crying too.

"What if I like you, too?" I asked.

"Then I would be a very, very lucky woman," she replied.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's note: Hey guys, here's chapter 5. Things are getting real here. Please review or share or whatever.**

How did she leave? When I think about it, it seems quite logical that she couldn't take her own car. But you can't really secretly escape in a cab. She must have taken the cab home, going north first, just to mislead me, picked up someone else's car and left for someplace else. Or maybe she'd arranged a getaway car. Maybe she had a pack with Norah or Benji all along. Maybe I was the only one who wasn't allowed to know. Maybe I'm supposed to figure that out first. But if she didn't tell anyone I will only lose time.

The only question that is roaming through my mind, apart from where the hell do I go, is why. Why would she take me on her unexpected mysterious journey and then just leave without me? Why is she leaving in the first place?

I try to ignore the other thing I'm thinking about. I don't want to think it. Even to just think it is scary, because it could actually be true. _Don't blame yourself_, I keep telling myself. I didn't do anything wrong. _This is not about me_.

"I will explain, Rachel, I promise," she'd said yesterday morning, before we left.

"Explain now," I said. I was getting worried, so I sounded more mad than I had intended.

"I can't!" she yelled back. She stood up from the bed again and closed her suitcase as she continued. "I can't explain right now and I will call you later, okay? I have to go and you have to let me, because you have no idea what's going on and I can't tell you, so let me go, dammit!" I'd only heard her yell like that once before. She wasn't okay.

"Is there someone else?" I yelled back. I knew I was being stupid as soon as I'd even thought it, but I was getting really mad at her for acting like this.

"What the hell, Rachel!" She dragged the suitcase towards the door and she wanted to grab her coat now, but I grabbed her by her wrists.

"Just tell me what the hell is going on." I wasn't screaming anymore, but my face was so close to her it wouldn't have been necessary. She looked away from me as I saw another tear coming up from the corner of her eye. It fell right to the floor as she blinked.

"I love you, Rachel," she whispered.

"That's not gonna work this time," I said, though my heart still skipped a beat when she'd said it.

"I can't take you or tell you where I'm going because you will distract me and I will get you in danger and that is the last thing I want. I have to do this alone." She grabbed her coat, picked up the suitcase and opened the door. I followed her all the way to her car and got in the passenger's seat as she settled behind the wheel.

She looked at me as if she was going to punch me out through the small car window, but she didn't even say anything as she started the car and left. With me.

_ Seven months earlier_

I woke up, still in Quinn's arms.

"Good morning, sleepy," she said, her voice still raspy with sleep. I turned to look at my alarm clock. "Shit!" I said as I saw it was 10 AM and I immediately got reminded of last night.

"It's okay, I called work about an hour ago. They gave us a day of due to the success and lack of a new case. Also, they probably know what happened last night."

"Oh my God!" I yelled, as I imagined getting fired after a single month of a job I was starting to genuinely enjoy.

"Rachel, everybody gets a party like this after their first success. Not just the first in some cases. It happened to all of us, nobody cares. I'm gonna make you some pancakes." She got up and walked out the door, leaving me sitting up straight in the bed, trying to remember if anything had happened between us.

I remembered that I had felt something strong for her and I realized it was not just because I was drunk. I remembered she'd told me she was gay and my heart jumped again, because it felt kind of like a dream, but it was so obvious now. I remembered that she had admitted that she liked me and I just assumed I fell asleep in her arms right after that.

I gathered some clothes, but then I remembered we'd gotten the day off, so I didn't bother getting dressed. I walked into the kitchen where Quinn was looking for the pans. It wasn't the first time someone pointed out that leaving your pans in the highest cupboard next to the fridge is not very convenient, but my dads had always left them there and I kept the habit.

I took one and handed it to her. She gave me a strange look, but then smiled and shrugged her shoulders. I watched her as she waited for the butter to melt. She looked like she was a great cook. She already had the batter done, though I hadn't heard the mixer.

She caught me looking and I looked away, but it was no use. She laughed softly.

"Did- did anything happen last night?" I asked her. I wasn't really sure yet.

"Would you've wanted anything to happen?"

"Uhm- So no?"

"You said you thought maybe you like me," she said, looking down at the pan again, pouring the batter in now.

"Right," I said, feeling kind of guilty for making her feel insecure. "Well I, uhm, I never felt anything for a woman, so I don't know."

"Do you feel something now?" she asked. "I guess," I replied. "But I never thought I would, you know. I mean, I just- I don't know. I'm- Sorry."

"It's confusing, huh?" she laughed. I laughed with her, but it seemed I had already figured it out. It sure was confusing, but she had been through this and she didn't seem to worry at all. She just knew. I guess that's a gift you get when you have some experience. You can just tell.

"Well, there's only one way to figure it out," she said. I barely understood what she meant, but I knew what I wanted. I walked towards her. She smiled only slightly, but she put her hands on my waist and I put mine on the back of her neck. She leaned in and I pulled back a little, but as soon as our lips touched, I leaned back in.

I had either misinterpreted the idea of a good kiss, or Quinn was secretly a magical fairy that put a spell over you through her lips. One thing was for sure, I had never felt like _this_ during a kiss. My entire body was tingling and I completely forgot there was more in the universe as I laid my entire arms over her shoulders now, to get even closer to her. Her arms wrapped tightly around my waist too.

Suddenly she pulled out of the kiss. She grabbed a spatula from the counter and turned the pancake around in one smooth swipe of her wrist, but her other arm stayed on my lower back. She laid the spatula back down and I looked her in the eyes. Those golden eyes. I kissed her again. Neither of us needed to say anything. It was clear.

_Seven months later_

We'd been driving for about an hour and neither of us had said a word since we'd left. I could tell she was thinking, because she always bit her lip with her mandible sticking out when she was thinking really hard.

I didn't even realize the radio had been on until it started crack. Quinn reached her hand out to change the frequency. I reached for it and held it softly with both my hands on my lap. She bit her lip even harder and looked away from me. When she turned back I saw that she was crying again. I let her hand go after a while and she wiped her face, but it didn't help much. I wanted to ask about it, but I was pretty sure she wouldn't answer me anyway.

I was wondering where we were going, though. I tried to make up a list in my head of things that would fit the situation and the things she had said. Unless she was a double spy for some Russian assassin, I couldn't really think of anything. I felt bad that she hadn't told me, but I also knew she must have had a good reason for it.

"Are we being chased?" I asked eventually. I figured she could have made some enemies over the past few years while tracking down criminals and making sure they'd get in jail. If one of them comes out and knows who she is, it could indeed be very dangerous. By answering this question, she still wouldn't have to say anything. All she had to do was say yes or no. She kept quiet for a while, but I gave her some time to realize it wouldn't matter.

"Sort of," she said. I kept myself to my promise and didn't ask anything else. She would tell me now or she would not tell me at all. Not today, at least.

It was almost 10:30 by then and I figured we'd have to switch seats soon, since driving for two hours straight is quite exhausting. I did some calculations so keep my mind busy while I got more and more bothered by the dreadful silence that almost drowned out the radio and I noted that we would get out of Pennsylvania by 12:00. I kept looking at the roads on the navigation system and the real ones to see for how much they were similar, but I got bored pretty soon. I started humming with the music on the radio and Quinn tapped her fingers to the beat on the steering wheel. The silence seemed to disappear for a while.

Suddenly she pulled over and stopped the car right next to the highway. I wasn't sure if that was even legal, but I didn't care. She unclasped her seatbelt and for a moment I thought she would run out of the car and leave me for real. After all, that had been her plan from the start. My second thought was that we were gonna switch seats. But instead she turned her torso towards me and pulled me in. She kissed me so roughly it kind of hurt and my face was getting wet with her tears, but I gave in with all I had. She pulled my hair in big clutches and for some reason the intensity of it all made me cry too.

What she hadn't been able to say with words, she laid out for me in that kiss. She told me that she was very thankful I hadn't made her go alone by gently biting my lower lip. She explained that she was very sorry about not being able to tell me anything by flicking her tongue against mine. She told me with just a gasping sob into mouth that we were going on an adventure that was going to change our lives.


	6. Chapter 6

I reach out for my sunglasses in the dashboard and only then I notice there's a piece of paper on the passenger's seat. I almost slam the brakes, but since I'm on the highway I decide I'd better pull over first.

In Quinn's curly handwriting, the note reads: _I made a reservation on your name for a plane back to Washington. It leaves at 2pm on Springfield Airport. Don't miss it._ For a moment I just stare at the note. No '_Hey Rachel_', no '_x Quinn_' at the end and especially no '_I'm sorry_'. I feel numb. It's like Quinn has taken everything I ever felt with her, to a faraway place where I'm not welcome.

But then my emotions come back. I barely notice the first tears streaming over my cheeks and falling from my face, but once they're going good, I can't stop them anymore.

She took me all the way here. She made me think that I was coming the whole way with her. And then she left me, stranded in Illinois with her car and a note telling me I'm going back to Washington as fast as possible to sit around and worry my ass off at home. I have honestly never felt this betrayed.

"Should I take it from here?" I asked her when she'd continued the trip after our kiss on the emergency lane. We'd passed the _Welcome to Ohio_ sign a few minutes before.

"It's okay. We're taking a stop soon anyway." I was starting to get used to her vague answers and took it as a no. I glanced at the engine counter, but it was still pretty full. I assumed she must have filled it after she'd brought me home the day before. I was pretty hungry, though, so I guessed we would stop at a gas station anyway to buy some sandwiches and eat them in the car.

She took an exit that seemed quite random to me. The exit stranded on a small roundabout, which had three asphalt exits and one dirt road. Surprisingly, she took the last one.

"Where are we going?" I asked her for the first time since we'd left.

"I'm showing you one of the prettiest sights of Ohio. Believe it or not, there are some." Even though the situation we were in was rather serious, she kept her sarcasm and her sense of spontaneous surprises.

"You're familiar around here?" I asked. She turned the car around another bend and a lake got into my sight. It wasn't very big, it was more like a very big pond, but it was really beautiful. I always thought Ohio was entirely flat, but on the other side of the lake, I could see a hill filled with trees and a few houses. The lake itself was very clear and the way it reflected the sky was amazing. It was one of the prettiest things I had seen in a while. Well, except one thing, maybe.

"I grew up here," she told me. "Well, not here exactly, but this is where my dad would take me and my sister fishing on days like these."

She got off the dirt road which startled me at first, because there was no road, she just drove into the open woods. She parked the car, that seemed perfect for sceneries like these, apart from the color, between two big trees quite far away from the road.

She stepped out of the car and I did the same. We walked to the back and she reached her hand out for mine. I took it and squeezed it tighter than I ever had. We walked towards the shore. It consisted of pebbles, so I wasn't gonna take my shoes off, though the weather was perfect for bare feet.

The lake seemed almost entirely transparent, but I couldn't see very far into it because of the reflection. Quinn lead me to the right. I figured we were just gonna walk around it. The pebbles crackled softly under our feet and the tiny waves splashed to the shore on our left.

"I was born in Lima, Ohio," she said. And only then I realized how much it had bothered me that she'd never told anything about herself. Not about her past, at least. "My mother was a financial lawyer and my father was a salesman. They weren't home much. I was always alone with my sister Liv and our nanny. Except on the weekends. My mom had the Saturdays and Sundays off, but dad just had the Sundays. So every other week, he'd take me and Liv here to fish. Or at least to sit on that little peninsula over there and watch dad fish." She pointed to a little bank of pebbles we were approaching that went into the lake for about twenty feet. "He barely ever caught anything, but that wasn't what it was about." She kept quiet for a while. I heard her inhalation stock just a little before she continued. "We just liked sitting there with just the three of us. He'd ask us how our week had been. He never asked how school had been. School wasn't a topic to be discussed at his only day off, he always said. He asked us about what we did after school and what we thought about a lot.

"Liv always had a lot to tell. When she was fourteen she had a lot of friends and I guess they went to the mall and did stuff teenagers did those days. Or she talked about her new boyfriend and how amazing he was for half an hour. But she never had much to say about her thoughts. That question was directed to me, because my dad knew I barely ever went outside or dated anyone. I was eleven. I was a dreamer. I dreamed about the future and that kind of stuff. I wanted to be a superhero or something. Catch the bad guys, anyway. I think I was already pretty realistic about it back then, but no one ever took it very seriously. Except dad."

We got to the peninsula and she let go of my hand. She walked towards the end of it and set down, her feet almost touching the water. I sat down next to her.

"On the hot days he'd let us swim. May 26th 2002 was one of those days." By the exactness of that date I knew this story was going somewhere. And I got a little scared. "Dad never fished when we were swimming, so he took his book and settled on the bank while me and Liv went into the water. She was quite a great swimmer. I mean, I could swim, of course, but that was about it. She was like a mermaid or something, she just slid through the water like it was her land. And she kept daring me to come further and further away from the shore. And dad didn't stop us, because he was reading his book and if he trusted Liv that if something were to happen she'd get us out of it." She'd stopped looking at me a while ago, but then she actually turned her head away. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. She put her hand in front of her mouth, but she kept looking over the lake.

"She had a goddamn seizure. In the water. Out of nowhere. It just happened."

"I'm so sorry," I said quietly. I felt so bad for her, I had no idea what else to say to her.

"I thought she was just fucking with me at first. I thought she was faking a fucking seizure to upset me. And I asked her to stop doing that, but she was starting to sink. So I swam up to her and I tried to keep her head up and I panicked and almost drowned myself. And I called out for dad, but I was almost out of breath and I couldn't keep up much longer. And I tried to drag her to the other shore. Next thing I remember I'm standing on the shore and I'm shaking because the sun had suddenly disappeared and my dad is leaning over Liv and his clothes are all wet and he's yelling at me. And I guess he's trying to save her but it's too late. I killed her." She's staring blindly at the shore on the other side of the lake. There's tears in the corners of her eyes, but they can't seem to get out of her eyes.

"No, you didn't," I said. "She had a seizure." She laughed meaninglessly while she shook her head.

"I let her drown in my arms. I was too lazy to keep her up, because I was too scared to drown myself."

"You were eleven," I said.

"It doesn't matter how old I was. I killed my sister. I killed her. Stop trying to tell me I didn't because that's what all those people said. Except mom, that is."

"They blamed you?" I couldn't believe anyone could put such thing on the shoulders of an eleven year old girl. Not even that girl herself.

"When your child dies you need to blame it on someone. You might understand one day. I hope you won't." I realized nothing I wanted to say would be good enough. There's no way of understanding something so terrible unless you actually go through it. I am a spoiled lonely child from two joyful dads who seemed to have all the time in the world for me and gave me all I wanted. I've never lost anyone. There was no way I could understand.

The silence that followed was a million times worse than the one we'd had in the car. In the car there was nothing for me to say. Now, I wanted to say everything, I wanted to express how sorry I was. But I didn't know what, or how.

After about ten minutes, she threw her head up to the sky. I assumed she was just enjoying the sun for a moment and I decided to ask the one thing that wouldn't make me sound like I didn't understand at all.

"What happened next?"

"She got buried in Lima. My parents started treating me like I was a foreign exchange student they got stuck with for too long. I made sure they would still notice me by doing everything they didn't want me to. I ruined everything for everyone, left Ohio as soon as I graduated high school and never looked back."

"Am I the first to know about this? Aside from the people here?"

"Yes."

"Even Sarah?" I felt super selfish for asking, but I had to know.

"Yes." And then I realized what was going on. She was showing me that she trusted me. That I was really important to her. That even though she couldn't tell me what was going on right now, she trusted me with this huge ghost of her past.

She had locked her past away in a vault which only she knew the code to. She left home to make sure it would always stay in there. And in the moment I needed it the most, she had opened it up for me. Because I really am that important to her. She really doesn't want me to give up on her. She really wants me to come after her.

That's what I'm using to convince myself that all this is real. To remind myself that I really didn't make it up.

It was real. And I'm going to get it back.


	7. Chapter 7

To distract myself from the terrifying idea that Quinn may not give a damn about me at all, I started thinking about my own past about half an hour ago. I started with my childhood in Marbletown, New York. It was a small town and there wasn't much to do, but it was really pretty and my dads fell in love with the place because if its 'enchanting scenery'. They moved there half a year before they got me, because they didn't want me to be raised in New York City.

There was a preschool and a middle school there, but I went to high school in Kingston. I never had many friends, but I've always thought one is enough, as long as it's a good one. Kurt was a good one. I still call him every week. Kurt was from Marbletown too, but we weren't really friends until high school, where we were the only ones who knew each other and didn't turn into total snobs to make new friends. So we joined the musical club together and we got better and better friends every day.

There was this boy in musical club named Martin and I dated him from sophomore year until graduation. We weren't serious enough for a long distance relationship and he was going to Kingston community college to study economics and become a teacher or a banker or something and I went to Nyada with Kurt. It was all very exciting. I didn't even care about the break up. Looking back that may have been for different reasons.

Anyway, so me and Kurt went to Nyada, where he met Adam and I met Brody. Brody was more of a fling. I don't really understand what it was, but it was over pretty fast. When we broke up I think I finally started to doubt my sexuality, but I didn't take it very seriously. I thought it was just curiosity, and after a few weeks I met Finn. Finn dropped out of college because he didn't know what he wanted to do, but he stayed in New York anyway, unsuccessfully looking for a job. I have no idea why, but I fell in love with him. I really did, there was no doubt about it. I was crazy about him.

He moved in with me and Kurt pretty soon, mostly because he couldn't afford his own rent anymore. After we graduated from Nyada, Kurt moved in with Adam and Finn and I stayed in our loft. He got a job selling office supplies and I had my shows. After a few years it was starting to get boring for me. Not for him apparently, because right when I started to doubt if this was what I wanted for us, he proposed to me. It made sense. We'd been together for about six years and somehow it was like we were already married, but the word scared me. And I felt like I was suffocating. So not only did I leave him, after a while I left New York, too.

If he hadn't asked me to marry him, I may have still been in New York. Not with him, maybe, but he did make me realize that at some point in your life, nothing will ever change again. And I don't want that. I don't know why I chose to work for the FBI. Kurt made a joke about it when I told him about my issue. It made me think.

So if it wasn't for Finn, and Kurt, I would never have even met Quinn. I wouldn't have been sitting in this car, my heart aching so bad for something I might never find back.

It feels so hopeless. I have no idea where to go and what to look for. But I can't stop. I have to keep hunting Quinn down if it's the last thing I do.

_Hunting_.

The past few months I have been trained to track people down. It is my job. I was hired to do this. Quinn taught me well. I can do this. Quinn knows I can do this.

_Five months before_

"Now this, my dear Rachel," Benji said, after we got out of hunt briefing, "is a wolf."

"More like a lion," Norah added. I couldn't tell if they were happy or jealous that they didn't get picked. My heart was beating all the way up my throat and I had a hard time breathing past it. I wanted to make a snappy comeback, but I couldn't.

"Guys," Quinn said. At first I thought she was just saying it to shut them up, for my sake, but then she added: "Rachel and I are gonna turn this one into a tamed bunny." My voice squeaked against my will. I wanted to follow the other hunters back to the office, but Quinn pulled me back. "Game plan," she said. She lead me to the coffee room.

There was no one there, because everyone was working. We sat down on a soft couch and she took my hand, which was shaking like crazy. "I'll get you some water," she said, and she snorted a little when she leaned in to kiss me on the forehead and stood up.

"First of all," she said, standing by the water tank, "you're gonna do fine. I remember what it's like, the first real dangerous hunt and I would lie if I said I'm not freaking out about this one. But I've done it about five times and it's safer than it seems." She came back and gave me the cup of water. I didn't drink it.

"Why did Clayton choose us?" I asked her. She could try as hard as she wanted, there was no way to calm me down.

"He wants you to learn. But he wouldn't have chosen you if he thinks you can't do it." I wanted to tell her that I learned from the best, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't really say anything that didn't express my worry.

She laid her hand on my upper arm and looked me in the eye. "I promise you that nothing is going to happen to you. I won't let it." I hoped she understood that my own well-being wasn't my only care.

We sat there for a while, until she continued talking about what was going to happen in the upcoming weeks. "For the big hunts, we get called into briefings, like you just saw. We do that so everyone can help the chosen hunters. Everyone just went back into the office to think about a plan for us, and we will get to choose one, with Clayton. We usually pick a plan B too, but Clayton doesn't need to know about that one. So we pick a plan and then the two of us start to plan every single detail precisely to the second and centimeter. And then we just do exactly as the plan tells us to. We're gonna turn the wolf in and we'll get a week or two off to get by."

"We don't even know who this guy is! How are we supposed to find him?" I felt sorry for yelling in her face, but I couldn't help it.

"With some exact planning we will find him." She was very calm. "This is the job, Rachel. This is what it's all about. You can do this, I know you can. And you're going to do it with me. I'm never leaving your side. We're gonna make it." I couldn't help but smile a little and I took a sip of the water to hide it from her.

"You should feel the rush when you hand that bastard over to the police! Woah!" She was the one yelling now. And her enthusiasm was so genuine and cute, I could no longer hide my smile. I even laughed at her when she jumped up and stuck her hand out to pull me up. I took it and we walked back to the office.

"The guy dumps bodies in the sewer," I said, as soon as her enthusiasm had stopped.

"We're going to Florida!" She ignored my previous statement and kissed me on the cheek as her hand softly pushed me into the office on my lower back.

Once again, the entire office started applauding for us, and this time I really didn't understand why. I couldn't smile when Quinn took my hand and threw it up in the air with hers like we were the victors of a Roman war. Like we had conquered the lion already. And then I realized we had.

For these people, it was anything but a nightmare to get sent out to the battle field. It would have been a dream come true. They were here for this. And so was I. I just didn't know it yet.

Of all these guys that I had looked up at, that I had seen as the real hunters while I felt like a lousy intern, I got chosen for one of the most dangerous hunts, probably in a long time. I hadn't noticed it, but I had slowly become one of them. While I thought I was just a little kid that got taken to school with her big sister, not understanding anything taught in the classes, her sister's friends first finding her adorable, but then just very annoying, I had turned into the sister.  
I got all the lousy small hunts, thinking it was because nobody else wanted them, while really it was to prepare me for the big work. And everyone else knew all along. They respected me, though I had only worked there for two months.

I threw my other hand up in the air too and then hugged Quinn as tight as I could to let her know that I was completely in for her.

And the hunt, too.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's note: Hey guys, sorry for the late update, I've been having exams. Anyway, I know it's short, but please keep the reviews coming because I love that :)**

After a few hours I almost forgot what I was doing. Not that I forgot about Quinn. She's all I can think of. Ever. But I stopped thinking a while after I'd stopped to buy a sandwich at the gas station and I was just driving, without asking myself why. I wasn't really looking out for her anymore, but I had this feeling that if I passed her, I would feel something.

I didn't get mad at myself when I came back to my senses. I had been mad long enough and I was getting really tired of it. I still kind of believe something will happen when I get closer to her. That I will get some sort of rush like I've been drinking three buckets of espresso if she gets on my path. It's probably a ridiculous thought, but I believe in it. I don't really have any other way.

The only clues I have are the vague directions the lady from the motel and Quinn herself gave me. Which would have been very helpful if they didn't both lead different ways.

On the other hand, the lady said she _saw_ her heading north. She _said _she was going west. It wouldn't be the first thing she'd lied about.

But then again, maybe she'd gone north because that was where the highway was. Maybe she was going west. And if that's so, then I have even less a chance of finding her.

I put the radio back on a while ago. It was a channel with a lot of talking, and they barely even played a song and yet they managed to pick the one song I did not want to hear.

_How can I just let you walk away, just let you leave without a trace.  
_

I wanted to change the channel, but I couldn't. You know when you never seem to really listen to a song until you understand what it's about. When it seems to describe your situation more perfectly than you ever could. I don't even really like Phil Collins and Against All Odds is probably one of the sappiest songs ever written. To be honest, I hate it. I hate it. Especially with all these memories stuck to it and the way too fitting lyrics. There's no way Phil Collins could understand this feeling. No one could.

Suddenly I feel like going back. The plane she'd offered me left Springfield about twenty minutes ago. The more I think about my chances of finding her, the more I regret my decision to keep following her.

I keep telling myself that she wants me to chase her, but she's made it clear several times that she really doesn't. That wouldn't stop me, but it makes me feel so stupid. I don't even know where she's going or why, and she wouldn't tell me. There's probably a whole lot more I don't know about her. And if it wasn't important I would be fine with that, but if this little secret is worth running away for, then why didn't she tell me about it?

My eyes are filled up with tears again. Maybe she just liked having me around for a while. Maybe she just really enjoyed how much I love her. Maybe I made her feel better about herself by being so fucking deeply in love with her. Maybe she just got such a rush out of it, watching me fall. Maybe she never cared about me. Maybe she just used me for some sick little game. And now the game was getting boring, so she quit. She left to play it somewhere else. Maybe that's what's going on.

And maybe I'm just making it a little more fun for her.

_Five months before_

That Monday, Quinn and I got called in one of the smaller meeting rooms, next to the office. She'd been with me the entire weekend. She took me out for dinner twice and kept telling me how proud she was that I was doing the hunt. If I still wanted to go back, I wouldn't be able to even try anymore. She'd been so sweet and she kept reassuring me everything would be okay. She told me about all the other dangerous hunts she'd done.

One time she and her previous partner went to Tennessee, where some psycho liked to take people into his house to lock them up in a very small room to see what would happen or something. No one knew for sure what he would do with them. When he was done with them, he knocked them out, by slamming a hammer on the part of their memory system in their brain, so that by the time the ambulance would come for them where he left them, they would have no idea what happened, and they'd have such a serious concussion some would probably never get back to normal. One even died.

So Quinn and Bastian, her former partner, went there and talked to the police to figure out every single detail there was to find the guy. Eventually they realized that three of the victims were Jehovah's witnesses, two were door to door salesmen or women and the other two happened to live on the same street. It was pretty vague, but Quinn and Bastian went to the street those people lived and tried every house until someone would let them in.

Quinn was their front woman, which meant she was usually the one that walked into the danger zone, while the other would try to get them out on the right time. So Quinn got asked to come in by this one guy, who seemed very normal, and then she got locked up after a while indeed.

Bastian had gone in through a window in the mean while and he called the police when he'd made sure it was safe. And by safe, he meant Quinn got out and the guy was knocked out with one of those tricks Quinn had learned me in my first week.

It didn't sound dangerous like that at all. It almost sounded boring. Quinn said I would say that after this one too.

But I was more curious about what happened with Bastian, and why he quit, because he seemed to do well.

"I'll tell you that some time," she'd said. She didn't want to scare me off, now that I'd agreed to do this thing.

"Good morning," Clayton said, folding his hands on the table and throwing each of us his little smirk in turns. He always had this look on his face that made it seem like he was so happy that he wasn't a hunter anymore and he was kind of laughing at us for it.

Two other hunters named Eric and Dean had joined us in the meeting. I was kind of wondering what they were doing there, but I figured my question would be answered soon.

"Thanks for coming, you all," he said next. He was never very formal, Clayton. Quinn said that was because he wanted the whole club to feel close, which would be hard if their chairman spoke to them as if they were complete strangers.

"You might be wondering why I brought these two fellas in," he said, directed towards me, because Quinn probably already knew. "They're coming with you. They'll watch everything you do and they will jump in there when it's necessary. Well, not everything." He smiled a little creepily and looked over from me to Quinn and back again. Quinn cleared her throat.

"You've never given me back up before," she said. I could hear she was a little let down.

"This mission is a little more dangerous, Quinn." I hoped she'd realize that the backup was for me. He trusted her. But not me. That's what I thought.

"I've had worse," she said. She was a little mad.

"Maybe you won't even need them. They're just coming with you and they will leave you to it. They will only help when it's really necessary. It's a safety measure. You should know why." By the silence that followed I could hear it was something between them. Quinn understood. The silence seemed to bother even Eric and Dean. I was just starting to get worried when Quinn continued.

"So, the plan."

"Yes! The plan," Clayton said. He leaned over the paperwork in front of him. "Outstanding plan, ladies!" The plan was pretty simple, exactly like the ones we'd performed a few times before. Quinn and I would go to Florida (we'd picked our own fancy hotel, the company would pay for it) and Quinn would turn herself into wolf's target, which was a young, illegal prostitute this time, sort of. That part made me feel very uncomfortable, but Quinn had assured me nothing would happen, and she would be safe, as long as I did my part of the job. I had to follow them in our rented car, which would serve as our escape car later on. Then I would break into where ever he would take her and call the police if there was enough evidence he was the one we were looking for.

How would we know if he was the one we were looking for?

We wouldn't. We could be chasing down a different wrong guy every day for weeks. All we knew was that the other girls usually went missing on Thursday nights.

How did Quinn convince me that was the safest way?

She didn't. The problem was that there was no other way.

Our plane would leave in a week. I think I was terrified before. I must have been. There were about a million things that could go wrong, and though not all of them were my responsibility, I was freaking out. I felt like I wasn't experienced enough. I hated Clayton for picking us.

But mostly I hated him for picking her. Or actually I hated her, for being so insistent on being the bait. I had offered it many times, but she wouldn't let me. Not because I was not experienced enough, but because she didn't want anything to happen to me. She said it would be too hard for me. She pointed out it wasn't an offense or anything, she was just being protective. She pretended it didn't occur to her that maybe I wanted to be protective over her too. Like it was any easier for me to watch her go at it.

Maybe Norah and Benji were right when they said dating your partner from work in real life didn't make you any stronger as a team. It only made you weaker.


End file.
